Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Kitchener woman follows car's GPS directions into Lake Huron, swims to shoreBut my GPS told me to turn here!!
Kitchener woman follows car's GPS directions into Lake Huron, swims to shoreBut my GPS told me to turn here!!
https://m.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/4jkog6/poll_shows_torontonians_want_more_bike_lanes_and/
Cycle Toronto did a survey which claims that a large number of people in Toronto support bike lanes. However, I think that there are many problems with the methodology of this survey which make the results useless:
It is hard for me to believe that the average person in Toronto is as supportive of bike lanes as these surveys claim. I think that the vast majority of people in Toronto rarely or never ride a bike, do not care about bicycling and are pretty indifferent to the bike lane issue (neither strongly support nor strongly oppose). Most people in Toronto are totally clueless about municipal politics and what is going on at City Hall.
- The survey was done using an online survey website called "Angus Reid Forum" where any person can sign up and get paid a small amount of money to complete surveys. The people using this website are not representative of the general population. A telephone survey would have been more reliable.
- The sample included a disproportionate number of people from the old city of Toronto and underrepresented outer parts of the city such as Scarborough.
- People who completed the survey probably ride bikes a lot more than average. My guess is that non-cyclists tended to not bother to complete the survey and were underrepresented. The survey claims that 21% of people ride a bike at least once a week and 28% ride a bike occasionally. According to the 2011 National Household Survey (which I realize is a voluntary survey so the data quality is not great, but probably much better than the Angus Reid survey) 25350 people in Toronto rode a bike to work in 2011 (2.16% of the employed population).
- The wording of questions probably encourages people to say that they support bike lanes more than they actually do.
So you discount the study and then go on to prove your point by using anecdotal evidence as usual.This is obvious when you count the number of bicycles on the road compared to the number of cars, number of pedestrians and the number of TTC riders.
The number of people who answered the survey in the old city of Toronto is far higher than the number of people who answered the survey in Scarborough relative to the population of both areas which seems suspicious to me. I think that this survey overrepresented bicyclists and residents of the downtown core. It may also be that people tend to give socially acceptable answers in these surveys and claim to support bike lanes when they really do not. There is a huge disparity between the number of people in this survey who claim to support bike lanes and the number of people who actually use them on a regular basis.
As I said, I think that the vast majority of the population of Toronto does not ride a bicycle regularly and has little or no interest in bicycling. People who a ride a bicycle regularly are a couple percent of the population and are heavily concentrated in the downtown core. This is obvious when you count the number of bicycles on the road compared to the number of cars, number of pedestrians and the number of TTC riders. There is no way that 20% of the population rides a bike at least once a week in the entire city. If you look at the census % of people who ride a bike to work this should be obvious. Most people do not have a strong opinion for or against bike lanes. It amazes me how much people are disengaged in municipal politics in this city. That is why we end up with Rob Ford as mayor and large numbers of incompetent city councillors on city council. People either don't bother to vote, or go to the ballot box having little or no idea who the candidates are and vote based on name recognition.
Very disappointing result at the PWIC hearing today, especially from Chair Jaye Robinson. She amended staff's suggested $16 million option to shelve any major corridor projects (including Yonge St.) not currently underway. Even the $25 million option being considered would have still left us woefully under-supplied with adequate safe cycling infrastructure in the pipeline. Big disappointment.
That's my understanding, yes (though someone who knows more could possibly refute that)—Council is free to do what it pleases with PWIC recommendations, though some recommendations don't have to appear before Council to meet approval (there were a number of motions carried in addition to the "main" one concerning recommending Robinson's amended/pared down $16 million plan).
I think the more concerning thing as it pertains to the broader cycle infrastructure debate as it will come before Council, having watched the hearing, is the creeping over-reliance on the outcome of the Bloor bike lane pilot. For those who missed, Robinson essentially said "let's delay all corridor projects not currently underway" pending the outcome of the Bloor pilot." It's worthwhile to take the ultimate success or failure of that project into account when considering similar pilots elsewhere, but every circumstance is different enough that each should be assessed on its own merits.
The 2011 National Household Survey and the Transportation Tomorrow Survey provide data on what percentage of trips are by car, transit, foot and bike. Both of those clearly show that only a tiny percentage of trips are by bike (although it is much higher in the downtown core).
The Angus Reid Forum survey results do not make sense and the sample is obviously not at all representive of the population of Toronto. No amount of weighting will correct for that.
When the 2016 Census comes out we will have a much better idea of how many people ride bikes since the 2016 long form census is mandatory.
It's insanity.
I'm unclear on how this all works though.
Conceivably, could a councillor put forward a motion during the debates at general council that basically undoes this amendment? It would have a lot easier time passing there than the suburban-loaded PWIC. Is that a thing that's possible?